Category: Saving

6 great tips for paying less when you travel on holiday

Everyone loves to travel on holiday. Exploring new places and getting away from your daily 9-5 is great. But nobody likes how much it can cost to go on holiday. Accommodation, transport, food, and activities – there are a lot of costs to factor into your overall budget.

Fortunately, there are simple ways you can save money when you travel. If you plan ahead and do your research, you can easily end up paying less than you might think. We’ll show you how with six great money-saving tips:

1. Find somewhere up-and-coming

It’s harder to find a bargain in popular places. Places like hotels and restaurants set their prices knowing some people will be willing to fork out the additional expense to stay in premium locations.

As such, one of the best ways you can save money is by choosing a location that’s yet to get loads of attention from tourists. The Lonely Planet picked countries like Canada, Colombia, Finland, Nepal, Myanmar, and Ethiopia in their best places to travel in 2017. Use lists like this as a starting point to find somewhere you’d love to go, but isn’t yet on everyone’s must-visit list.

2. Travel at cheap times

Booking a flight for late at night or early in the morning can save you money, as they are the least popular times to travel. If you want to get a bargain, you have to be willing to stay up or wake up earlier than the hordes. It might seem like effort, but your budget will be better off for it. Think of the money you save as additional spending money and you’ll soon be convinced an early morning is worth it.

3. Learn to haggle

Did you know haggling can save you at least 20-50% off the original asking price? Yet 49% of people never even try. Although some people are naturally better than others are negotiating a lower price, everyone get can better with a bit of practice. As long as you don’t reveal how much you’re willing to pay early on, you’ve got some leverage to haggle with people. Test it out at market stalls, before trying your luck with an upgrade at your hotel.

4. Sign up to email updates

To get the latest offers and updates from hotels, airlines and other relevant holiday providers, you should sign up to their email updates. We understand that promotional emails can be frustrating at times – but it is one of the best ways to be amongst the first to know about good deals.

If you’d rather not fill your inbox up, consider following your favourite providers on social media. More so than ever, companies are engaging with key platforms to reach out to potential consumers. They’ll use these sites to announce offers, so keep an eye out. There’ll probably be some competitions you could enter to get a few freebies as well (although they tend to want your email).

5. Fly indirectly

Making your journey longer might sound like a nightmare – but flying indirectly has its advantages. First of all, it will save you money. In fact, The Telegraph reckon you could save up to 50% of flights by taking a little diversion. They found flights from London to Malaga, on the same dates, for more than £50 cheaper if you were willing to spend a couple of hours in Copenhagen on the way home.

If you plan it well, you could get to see another location on your holiday. Spending a bit of time in a lovely city on your way home is no bad way of breaking up travel.

6. Weigh and measure your luggage

The last thing you want when going on holiday is to be hit with unexpected costs at the airport. But this can easily happen if you’re not careful with the size and weight of your luggage. Make sure you check the airline’s small print on how much you can check in and carry as hand luggage.

Other unexpected hidden holiday costs could include: data roaming, pet care, and resort fees. The earlier you plan your trip, the more likely you are to spot where a surprise expense might come from.

How do you save money when your travel? We’d love to hear your suggestions and recommendations for making the most of a holiday budget.

5 Simple financial restraints to change your spending habits

What the hell is a financial restraint? Well it maybe a term I just coined. When googled there’s not a lot that comes up! So, my thoughts on what financial restraints are this; it’s anything that keeps you disciplined in your spending. Basically, it’s your sheer determination or habits that prevent you from spending money. Read more

Ways to replace cable are ALL around us nowadays, I haven’t actually paid for a cable subscription since I think 2008. The only reason I had cable from 2005 to 2008 is because I was living with two good friends at the time and they both wanted cable, so we got cable. We just went with a very basic cable package so it wasn’t outrageous like today’s prices. Read more

Comparison sites have been around a long time; you’ve almost certainly used some yourself. Have you ever searched for a trip on Expedia or Kayak? I do it all the time, you can usually save a few hundred dollars on trips you’re planning. They’re also great research tools to help plan and budget your trips.

While the above-mentioned sites work great for 90% of our purchasing. They unfortunately don’t help us with big ticket items like insurance and mortgages. Insurance typically is worth thousands of dollars and mortgages are often in the hundreds of thousands. You can save more on these than you would on almost any other purchase, besides the houses and cars themselves. Apparently, Canadians just don’t do this. According to a recent study by LowestRates.ca only 8% of respondents used a comparison site to source their most recent mortgage! WHAT?!?

Overspending habits: What do you overspend on?

Most people have shopping habits that they may or may not realize. Breaking these habits may have the potential to save you lots of money because you’re probably overspending. These habits can be broken but breaking them can be mentally tough.

What I mean by mentally tough is that they’re overspending habits that you’ve either grown up seeing or have developed over time without realizing. For me, it’s buying books. When I first started working I would read a book every week or two, now I’m lucky I have the time to read one a month. But my biggest issue is that I for some reason don’t walk 4 blocks to go to my city’s public library where they would have the majority of these books to borrow for free. Something which not only benefits me by saving me money, but also walking there would be good exercise and it would reduce waste in the environment. Yet I always go online and order a brand new book for myself that will be read once and sit on a bookshelf for years until I give it away to a friend that may notice it when they visit.

Is income tax season as scary as they want us to believe?

Spoiler alert: Nope!

Well it’s the end of February and I’m starting to hear all of the usual ads on the radio when I’m driving anywhere now. Even on TV you’ll see a few of them. They’re all reminding you of the same thing and trying to tell you that you need a professional’s help. They’re all about tax season! With Canada’s personal income tax deadline coming up on April 30th, 2016 I’m going to tell you why you don’t have much to worry about and why you should file your taxes yourself.

Judging by all the commercials I hear on the radio you’d think filing taxes was the hardest thing in the world. These commercials like to emphasize that if you don’t get it right the government is going to come after you for more money. Sometimes they’ll use terms you might not be completely familiar with like deductions, tax credits, or audits.

I think a lot of people are under the impression a lot of these tax preparation places employ accountants and highly trained professionals that know the income tax structure inside and out. Unfortunately this is about the furthest thing from the truth. Read more

Don’t worry Justin Trudeau and the Liberals will probably NOT be raising your taxes.

Dear people who think they’re a part of the 1% and are going to “suffer” from the proposed new tax regime that the Liberals talked about during their campaigning, you probably don’t need to worry as much as you think!

First of all let me say, I saw an unbelievable amount of “end of days” comments after the election. Everything from terrorists are now going to invade us to how much more in taxes Albertans are going to be paying. I can’t really dispute the terrorism thing with cold hard facts, other than nothing has happened so far! Now with us heading into winter I think we’re probably safe until Spring 2016. On the other hand, the tax issue I can definitely shed some light on.Read more

Driving can be very expensive. Everyone knows how much they pay for their vehicles and they know how much they pay for gas and insurance and everything else, but does anyone actually add it all up and see how much does it cost to drive a kilometer in their particular mode of transportation?

For me personally, I drive a 2009 Toyota Rav4. I bought the Rav4 used in 2013 after the 14 year old Grand Am that I inherited had everything break in it. Seriously, the AC broke on my drive from Halifax to Calgary in June of 2011 and the heater broke in January 2013. Needless to say, spending several thousand dollars to get them fixed on a car worth maybe $2000 once everything was fixed wasn’t really a great financial decision.

I bought the vehicle because I thought it was the right thing to do. I do need a vehicle occasionally to get certain places that public transit doesn’t reach. Sometimes it’s nice to do a small road trip to the mountains or wherever I want to go.

The cost of the having the vehicle doesn’t bother me, I personally think it was a great deal. I bought it used in 2013 with 69,231 kilometers (43,018 miles) on the odometer, fully loaded, leather seats, spare winter tires and rims, all of the options. It would have cost me just under $22,000 if I have paid for it outright in cash. Everything comparable was several thousand more and the Rav4 had won best in its class for several years running by consumer reports and many Car and Driver comparisons.

Lately I’ve been wondering how “good” a deal I really got for myself or is it just expensive personal travel? I took a look into my old files from when I bought it to find out what it’s currently costing me (and my girlfriend) to drive each kilometer.

Or are you like most of my family and friends and just throw the bulk of it in a “high” interest e-savings account and contribute an arbitrary amount of your income to a high fee RRSP through your banks’ advisor because you didn’t plan first?

I’ve been there! I still am for parts of it but I’m working to fix that and you should too.Read more